Charities in the UK receive between £1.8bn and £2.4bn a year through in-memory fundraising, according to new research by Legacy Foresight.

The In-Memory Insight – Remembering Together report shows that the in-memory giving market has grown “significantly” over the past decade and is “a lot larger than charities appear to be recording”.

From the survey we found that:

• Nearly half of adults had been bereaved in the past 2 years and a third of adults had given an inmemory donation in the past year.
• The in-memory market is large at between £1.8b and £2.4b – and a lot larger than charities appear to be recording.
• Funeral donations are still the largest source of income, but only by a small margin and their dominance on in-memory income is continuing to decline.
• Young people are a key part of the in-memory market, giving higher than average donations and being more likely to say they will continue giving in the future.
• Online payments are now more popular than cash and cheques – and we are starting to see evidence of newer payment methods via gaming / social media.
• Health charities and hospices receive over half of in-memory donations (by volume) but loved in life charities still receive a high proportion, especially from commemorative objects and events.
• Around half of people think a charity knows their gift is in-memory motivated – but our consortium benchmarking data suggests the number is a lot lower.